I never knew this until Rob Neyer pointed it out this morning, but Big League Chew is literally just a few weeks younger than yours truly, the guy who heads Big League Stew.

Conceived in the minds of Rob Nelson and Jim Bouton, it was first cooked up in Nelson's kitchen in 1979 on Babe Ruth's 84th birthday and has worked its way into the saliva drip of many an American youngster. Some of my earliest memories involve riding to White Hen on the back of my dad's bike, where he'd always buy me a cherry Icee and a pouch of the good stuff. (I was never allowed to buy those little gum cigarettes, which seems ridiculous in retrospect.) 

Colleague Jeff Passan luckily had a pouch on hand to celebrate BLC's birth today and he passes along the above photos to mark the occasion. To listen to the old Big League Chew jingle and get it stuck in your head for the rest of February, click here